A Little piece of Paradise… College Hill, Ohio - SELFCRAFT

Presbyterian Church bought it at the time to make room for the new building and demolished her oldhome. I remember her telling the class that it was so old that it had no nails-had been put together bypegs. She was an interesting teacher. Another house I remember from those years was the John R. Daveymansion at 1626 Linden Drive, which was the boarding house for some of our teachers. Miss Stewart, oursixth grade teacher, gave a party for our class there and we were in the beautiful parlor.On the north side of Llanfair were the ‘Dummy’ tracks for the freight line used by the TractionCompany going along the north side of the street, crossing Belmont going through a ravine and under abridge on Glenview Avenue, then curving around, crossing Belmont again, going northward crossingNorth Bend Road and into Steele’s subdivision (West College Hill). It went along Railroad Avenue toSimpson, along Simpson, crossing Galbraith Road and ending at Compton Road in Mt. Healthy. We werealways warned to be careful going out on the Llanfair Avenue side and told to stay off the freight cars.About this time Mr. Altamer (our principle) told us one morning that Wilson Hunter, an AfricanAmerican boy in our class, had been killed the day before falling off a freight car and being run over.In the early spring I would come home from school and mother and I would start down CedarAvenue looking for very young dandelion plants. Mother made a delicious salad, tossing them withvinegar and bacon, garnishing the salad with hard boiled eggs. Another dish that Dad taught her to makehe called ‘slum gullion’ which he said he had learned from hobos-it was liver pudding sausage cooked,taken out of its casing, mixed with mashed potatoes and made into cakes and fried.We always had a little garden in the back yard. Dad would go out in the evenings and dig in the dirt.The birds would follow him around waiting for him to turn up worms. One year he had a robin so tame itwould take worms out of his hand. Dad would go out on the front porch after supper with the eveningpaper and the robin would spot him and sit on the fence post nearby and call until Dad would laugh andget up and go around the house to the garden. The robin would fly alongside and wait for Dad to digworms for it.In 1913 I went to kindergarten-Miss Bridgemann was the teacher in the southwest corner of the littlered brick building still standing. (I learned many years later that it had been the high school for CollegeHill). Hausers lived just west of the school-Steve was in my class and at Easter time they had tiny littlebaskets with wee candy eggs in them hidden in their yard for the class to find... I can remember making apresent for my father-men used mugs for shaving soap then and we made a sort of booklet of round tissuepaper pieces to wipe the soap off the razor…The old school building was in use then-a big two-story brick with three rooms on each floor. MissMaybelle Brown’s first grade room was on the east side of the first floor. We only had class in themorning-Miss Brown taught music in the afternoon. Miss Alice Wilde’s second grade and Mary Bryant’sthird grade were on the west side of the first floor. Miss Gatch had a fourth grade on the east side of thesecond floor and Mamie Strasser had her fifth grade on the west side. I cannot remember who was in theother room up there. By that time two frame colony buildings had been built just west of the old buildingmy fourth grade was in one of the colony buildings. My fifth grade was back in the old building withMiss Strasser. In the sixth grade I had Miss Stewart; the seventh was Miss Waldman and the eighth, MissHattie Braiser. The principal, called ‘Dusty’ Altamer because he always wore gray suits, had his office inthat building. We also had manual training for the boys and cooking and sewing classes for the girls in thebasement. Our restrooms were also in that building-there was none in the old ‘pig eye’ school and youcould see kids running over from there.The boys used the Cedar Avenue side of the playground and on the Llanfair Avenue side, near theold building, were the swings-the only playground equipment we had. I can remember a May Day fete onthe Cedar Avenue side where we wound streamers around the May pole. There was a bell in the tower,which the janitor used to ring-a warning bell and a final bell. I used to stop and bring tidbits for thepatrolman’s horse tied to a maple tree on Cedar Avenue and pet him until the warning bell rang, then runso as not to be late for school. I would bring clover and apples for my four legged friend named Major. Itwas awfully hard for small legs to make it across Hamilton Pike-the street car and traction tracks weredeep down in ruts from the constant build up of macadam.228